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Are you AMPed? How to get your content ready for Google Accelerated Mobile Pages

Hopefully, your content marketing team is ready and rearing to go for a brand new year of social media campaigns and the creation of engaging website and blog content. The key, however, is to be found – and that means paying attention to the folks at Google.

Back in October, Google announced their Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, which uses an open framework AMP HTML that is built using existing web technologies. AMP HTML allows properly developed website pages to load instantly on mobile devices – as long as said content is clicked into through a Google SERP. AMPing will kick off in February of this year, and is a mighty fine trick to have in your mobile marketing bag.

Of course, every trick has a caveat.

Get Your Website Content AMPed

In order for your pages to AMP, they have to be created using a basic AMP HTML page format, for which Google has provided instructions. You can check out their tutorial Here.

While Google’s Google’s John Mueller says that this will be, “next year’s hottest new website technology,” you don’t have to wait until February to jump on board. According to Google, “Content you publish to your sites today will be eligible to show up in the demo now, and soon in Google search.”

You can start implementing the technology now, and the sooner the better so more of your web pages can be found quicker once AMP HTML launches.

Quick Load Times Matter

Everyone knows that the longer your website takes to load, the more likely you are to lose a customer. According to kissmetrics, people expect their mobile gadgets to be as efficient as their laptops when it comes to online interactions, AND bounce rate increases exponentially with every second a searcher has to wait for a page to load.

While marketers know that rich pages including heavy graphics, animations and/or videos are good for content marketing in terms of ranking, engagement and conversion, we also know those pages are the slowest to load. It can feel like a catch 22, right?

Google’s idea is that the new AMP HTML technology will equalize load times across the content spectrum as well as across the spectrum of mobile gadgets or devices. Your content shouldn’t load any faster or slower on your iPhone, your partner’s Kindle or your neighbor’s Droid – regardless of whether it has a video or not. The AMPed technology is also designed to work alongside smart ads.

Of course, we can only imagine that a bona fide launch of a technology like this one, that makes AMPed pages load faster, will only catalyze mobile users’ dissatisfaction with slow-loading pages. Start AMPing some of your top-performing website pages, and make sure all your new content is loaded in AMPed form so you are ahead of the game.

To give you an idea of how widespread the AMP HTML technology is, here is a list of the sites that already implement it:

Pinterest

WordPress.com

Twitter

LinkedIn

Adobe Analytics

Chartbeat

And Parse.ly

Not surprisingly, Google plans to add more partners and will develop more features that focus on content, advertising and distribution.